Joachim Sartorius

Joachim Sartorius, born in Fürth in 1946, grew up in Tunis. He was a poet, translator and writer who first worked in the diplomatic service, including in New York, Istanbul and Nicosia. He served as secretary general of the Goethe-Institut until 2000 and subsequently directed the Berliner Festspiele as its artistic director until 2011. Sartorius published numerous poetry collections, prose works and poetic travel narratives, including The Princes’ Islands and My Cyprus. As a translator, he translated American poetry, particularly works by John Ashbery and Wallace Stevens. He edited, among other works, the collected editions of Malcolm Lowry and William Carlos Williams, as well as several poetry anthologies. In 2019, he received the August von Platen Literature Prize for his complete oeuvre.